Center Highlights Speech Restrictions At International Conference

The Center and its allies are participating in the Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) 2018 in Warsaw, Poland.

The conference is supposed to be dedicated to a focus on Democracy & Human Rights within all of the 56 member states – official reps of each government plus a slew of Civil Society NGO reps.

The official theme for the plenary sessions held on September 17, 2018 was “Fundamental Freedoms” including freedom of expression and other core freedoms. The Center and its allies focused especially on the human right to free speech in their remarks.

The Center’s Executive VP Christopher Hull, VP for Research and Analysis Clare Lopez and Senior Fellow Stephen Coughlin specifically condemned the OSCE ODIHR HDIM organizers for attempting to impose a Code of Conduct that in effect constituted prior restraint on free speech. They also made specific & repeated mention of “sharia” as antithetical to the human right to freedom of expression and speech.

Click here to watch their remarks on the Secure Freedom YouTube channel.